Are you toying around with the idea of outsourcing B2B appointment setting services?

Sales leaders know that a great way to qualify leads and build the funnel is to pick up the phone and set an appointment with a fresh contact. Unfortunately, that takes time, specialized skills, technology, and money to profitably generate quality sales opportunities over the phone.

So, if the thought of cold calling is causing you to lose your hair faster than you may be genetically predisposed, or you’re just looking to boost your pipeline, then check out this list of 4 reasons why hiring an outsourced call center may be the best decision you make this year.

1. Save Time

Cold Calling takes time, and a lot of it. With a limited number of hours in the day, that means you’re not focusing on closing the hot deals, improving your product, or helping customers.

The other thing to think about is how much time from your most expensive payrolled employees is spent on tasks that are beneath their paygrade. Do you really want somebody you're paying a healthy six-figure income sorting through piles of unqualified leads and dead-ends?

2. Keep Your Pipeline Stocked

There's an interesting conundrum in sales that I think we can all relate to.

There are the days when our pipeline is as dry as the Sahara Desert, where cold-calls are abundant, and the calendar is empty. It's the most stressful, because it provides the least amount of job security or insight into future sales. This is when your most successful players spend their days pounding the phones, and their nights sorting through their leads and avoiding their families and personal affairs.

Then there are the days when their pipelines are bursting with opportunities, but nothing is closing... or at least, nothing is closing yet. Their time gets sucked away into strategy meetings, researching prospective clients, and white-boarding the different scenarios, including objections and next steps.

The more time they spend on a full pipeline, the less time your teams are thinking about next month when their pipelines are very likely to be dry again.

This is a funny stage, isn't it? We want to celebrate the success of setting that great appointment or going through our first phase assessments, and qualifying a prospect, and getting them excited and setting that follow-up call. But quotas are quotas, and even when we're meeting and exceeding them, we're never comfortable as long as deals aren't closing on a regular basis.

And it's a paradoxical requirement, because there's no such thing as "regular basis" in the world of sales, is there?

The crazy part is when the deals ARE closing, we still can't feel comfortable. Why? Because, deep down we're still thinking about next month. Sure, it's raining now, but remember two months ago when our pipe was completely dry and how awful it felt to come down on your sales teams for their lagging performances?

You and your closers only have so many hours in the day, and when it's raining, you have to focus on THAT. It's called working closest to the dollar, a concept and philosophy that I'm sure you're quite familiar with. With outsourced b2b appointment setting services, you keep that pipeline growing, even when you're energies are focused elsewhere.

3. Keep team morale up

Your sales teams are in sales because they exhibit certain personality traits. Chances are they love seeing their names in lights, and work best with positive reinforcement. They're probably quite emotional and passionate, and because they're working off of commissions, their personal success is tied to that of your company's.

There's something horribly degrading about going from riding high on a stellar month to being at the bottom with a dry pipeline that will destroy even your strongest performers. What makes it worse is when management has to come in and crack the whip because numbers are lagging, and being that we're in the first stage again, the outlook is grim again. It's a vicious cycle.

When you have a steadier stream of warm and hot leads coming in from an appointment setting and qualifying resource, you fill in a lot of these lower gaps, and keep the emotional state of your sales teams where it needs to be.

What was the one thing we learned from GlenGarry Glen Ross that still rings true today? It's ALL about the leads!

Let's also not forget about the value of down time. If your top performers are burning the midnight hours stacking their day with their cold-calling schedule instead of spending time with their families and hobbies, they're likely to burn out quickly, and take their high-performance attitude to one of your competitors.

4. Save More Money

Hiring, training, managing and supporting a team of cold callers is expensive! It also requires dedicated technology to support a cold calling team making hundreds of calls per day.

Outsourcing your cold calling operation means that someone else can use their time and money to focus on what they’re good at. Imagine a setting where collaboration and energy is spent focusing on the one niche of expertise you were hired for.

And again, I want to go back to the point I made before about saving time with your biggest salaries.

5. Professional Communications

Appointment setting is a specific skill. Just because you’re a great closer, doesn’t make setting an appointment any easier. In fact, flipping that switch from one to the other likely eats up countless hours and energy.

It's why so many companies compartmentalize their sales teams into the tripod of inside sales, outside sales, and administrative support. By doing this, each person becomes an expert in their field, and they are able to get their opening lines and pivot points down to a science.

Even still, inside sales is often juggle the three different stages, and will go through drought after drought.

6. Make More Money

If you want to close more deals, but don’t have the time, money, or expertise (or hair) to make cold calling a priority, or if your current systems doesn't seem to be delivering the kind of ROI that gets you excited, consider a mercenary appointment setting team.